The Fabrica of Death
by iccypenguin
Summary: The PREQUEL to The Fabrica of Life; Before the time of Faya, there was also the time of Escha. "Take me with you," Faya whispered to me.
1. Prologue

The most from life is life itself; and to have it eternally should have been enough. But I have come to learn, amidst the centuries blurring between the years of the past, that what should have, is not always what is. The pain, stretched by time and etched into memories; memories hard to ignore and never forgotten. Is this all Faya has brought for me? Can't she remember those hot nights in Alexandria, staring out the window of our Egypt; our home? Remember how she whispered those sweet lies, sweet like Faya, sweet like Egypt, into my eager ears? _Be with me forever_, the air hushed. _I'll have you forever,_ the wind hissed. And the centuries, blurring and whispering, hushing and hissing, has brought me nothing but frustration and pain. Can I live a life that I have no will to live?


	2. Chapter 1

_I just got back from Costa Rica at two in the morning and I still managed to start the Fabrica of Life. My entire front side is as red as a lobster and I've been smothering myself with lotion for the past week as if my life depends on it. School starts tomorrow and the first thing everyone will notice about me is how red my skin is. Oh well, they obviously haven't heard that red is the new black._

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1st Act – Violent Sheets. Soak in Jealousy

I fell to my knees and stumbled back up, scraping my palm across my face to clear away the tears. It was lonely to run without being pursued, but it was all a lot for me. She had always kept me separate. She had always kept me from other boys. She was standing near the brickyard, surveying the construction underway. I threw myself at her.

She bundled me up into her arms, turned my face by the chin with a hand.

I submitted to her inspection breathlessly.

"Leechtin, I went to the piers."

"By yourself?"

It went without saying. I buried my face in her neck, unable to communicate my grief in her language, seven years old, hers for as far as I cared to remember but able to remember much more. I am unable to say what I knew then, because I can't remember what came before being Leechtin's ward. I knew far more then, and she might have known, but I know that at that time, Leechtin didn't care to think about much. I didn't think about much. She placed me highest amongst the other boys and I loved her for it.

She took me into the house, taking down her long black hair as she went. She smelled like construction. She never smelled like herself; she always smelled like Herculaneum. She didn't mention my condition, the dirt on my face, the bruises on my legs, the rock I still held in my hand for life. She took it from me, removing my hand from the rock finger by finger. Unmentionable that I'd obviously used it to strike someone, in defense or otherwise. She kissed my forehead, setting me down on the edge of the fountain in the atrium, unlacing my sandals.

"Who let you out this morning?"

"Vasvius."

"I see."

She breathed out, frowning over my legs, suddenly pushing them down and I was breathless again, surprised. She swept away, letting her heavy silk robe fall from around her shoulders behind her, hair swinging out over her shoulders.

The darkness made patterns through the window.

***

I don't remember a whole lot from the night Vasvius tried to kill me. He has tried to talk to me about it before but I have never tried to listen very much.

Vasvius came at me with the knife and I tried to escape under the bed but he grabbed my tender ankle and I screamed. He squeezed the air out of me with his arm, holding me to his chest. Leechtin caught up, framed in the doorway, breathing heavily, black hair in her face.

"Put him down."

"Fuck you," Vasvius said, spitting out the words, gesturing with the knife, pointing at me, pointing at Leechtin, who had never loved him. He tossed me onto the bed and I couldn't make a noise. Leechtin froze and I was going to die before a savage blow knocked the poor servant from off of my body to the floor, knife clattering away. I scrambled away engulfed by Vasvius's laughter and terror and the sound of him dying.

"I have loved you since I was a child! I have loved you since I was a child!"

It was all I heard. Perhaps I had heard more, seen more, felt more, but it was all I remembered; it was all I kept that night.

***

In the morning when Vasvius stumbled out of Leechtin's bedroom, I flattened myself against the wall with the breakfast tray in my hands; Leechtin reached out and grabbed me and slammed the door.

I remember very clearly the blood on the coverlet and choking back tears while she held me. She was my master as much as she tried to treat me as her ward; there was Vasvius' still wet blood on the sheets. She pressed me onto my back and slept with her hand over my chest so I couldn't wiggle away. I swallowed the screams in my throat. I closed my eyes. The blood soaked into my hair.

I knew what Leechtin was, deep in my heart. We all did, but I think that all of us had our own moment when we knew that we would not be allowed to escape it, that we were trapped. It has been my life. Part of me is still seven years old, lying on a bloody coverlet in the master's bedroom while the other children bang bang bang on the door. Something is wrong with Vasvius. There are blond golems; there is a blond demon.

My skin was itchy with the drying blood. I tried to hyperventilate silently, laying there, laying there with my eyes shut as tight as I could shut them; I listened to the other children go away, go away and I did not cry at all. Would it have been different if I had struggled and pushed him away? Any other child would have. Maybe I was too much over my head in all of that stuff to be any other way.

Leechtin slept. I kept quiet.

The darkness made patterns through the window.

***

In Herculaneum it was really my adolescence. If I care to think about it in any kind of depth, I think that I'd like to go back there. I'm conflicted all the time in a way I don't think I was as a child. I knew which way was up. I knew how to get back to a place that felt stable because there was a safety net, brothers and master and the hierarchy intransigent to all of that.

I have had enough time in my life to have many moments to wonder where the start of everything was. When did I stop believing that things might go normally for me? I think that it was on the bloody coverlet but was it there really?

To be honest, it's often easier not to demonize the players in my life then and it seems more normal to me in that kind of light. At least Leechtin never played games with me. At least Leechtin never did all sorts of things to me that I have seen people do to children over the course of my life, things that I have done like biting and kissing and stealing. It doesn't make it better, but what could I have expected? My lot in life was to have a master, son of a toppled nation in a Roman universe. It was de facto that I was pretty as a child and that Leechtin liked and still likes to worship pretty little children. At least she was discreet about what she was. At least she waited to take me until I begged her to, which is the most important thing. It is the thing that I have not done so many times, waiting, and it is the worst part of me that I haven't. In so many cases, it would have made so much difference to have waited for a little while.

***

Leechtin washed the blood out of my hair, held me, resting her cheek on the top of my head, eyes closed. She liked to hold me and I would be quiet because she liked that too. Her long fingers were always kept where I could see them, not threatening. I couldn't fall asleep in her arms, it was too cold, but it was not difficult to relax there. Heat was a fact of life in Herculaneum and it drew me to those arms where I wanted to be, a cool, dignified reprieve.

She whispered, "Always stay like you are," and I would lazily desire as a child to always always be able to please her; it is part of a greater obsession that is Leechtin in my life.

I coiled my fingers in her sash and rested until she pushed me away, already tired of it, already tired of me.

I could always go play with the other children, but they picked on me mercilessly even if they were protective in public. They were older than me, as old as 14 to my 7 and had all at one time or another caught Leechtin's eye for various reasons, though they were certainly not expected to behave as wards like I could, flouting certain rules if I wanted.

After the time with the bloody sheets, Vasvius stopped caring about me. He didn't dare to slap me around, and let me have as good a plate for meals as the others without tampering with it. Among his many tasks running the house was to make sure the other children were taken as well cared for as could be expected for our station, and he did that without passion.

His passion was reserved for Leechtin, and he had little of it after the violent episode, falling to his knees in the courtyard or staying in his room for days. Finally, he wouldn't go out at all, and his subordinate, Vivacio, took over the daily routine with us.

I have never been close to these people.

Vivacio for me was better because there was very little violence in his nature even in the face of his great jealousy.

Leechtin seemed milder to have gotten Vasvius out of the way.

It was just that a lot of things were hidden from my view when I was at that age.

I cannot say definitively what I feel about Leechtin, or definitively what I felt for her then though I am sure many parties would enjoy the privilege of such information. It has never been clear to me and I have never attempted the figuring out of it, nor should I, I think. I have just been living for a long time and the darkness never failed to make patterns through the window.


	3. Chapter 2

___There is SO much homework to be done. I swear my desk will probably collapse at any minute._

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Palomia touched my knee and I screamed. Palomia, oldest charge, aggressive and scrappy, beautiful like an angel because of grooming and the constant need for ingratiating games, lay over me in bed.

"Be quiet. If you scream bloody murder we'll all be in trouble."

I screamed. Another boy, Ilinia, middle brother, precious but unthreatening, covered my mouth, reaching across the bed, "Shut up."

I tried to extricate myself from the tangle of limbs and received a kick in the back, "Stop it," soft voice.

Palomia was always hurting me when I slept with them; it was like a game.

Though often wandering far on their own during the day, we all shared a room during the night in the back of the house, servant's quarters. Though far more extravagant a lodging than usually recommended for those of such station, often the bed seemed very small with five people in it. The four boys who I shared it with whenever Leechtin did not call me to her chamber at night did not pretend that I was their equal at all, but rather something to be teased, pinched, and made fun of.

"Kiss him. He's a little angel. I wonder what's so good about him. Feels the same if you pinch it," Palomia said, pinching the small of my back.

"Stop," I demanded, curling up.

"Get off me," grumbled Cassivio, mysterious and hateful cherubim, in the small space.

Palomia bit my neck and I screamed, thrashing wildly round and beating him on the shoulders with my fists. He was much bigger than me and used to being hit with a closed fist, so I smacked him with my small hand. Sweet Palomia laughed and bundled me to his chest where I always slept. I am sure he thought of me as a pretentious little brother. The others, closer to my age, were never as demonstrative.

***

Leechtin wound her fingers into my hair and looked into my face solemnly. She was investigating me, going over my seven year old skin. These things were never insidious. They did not feel strange. She undressed me and found the place where Palomia had pinched me on my back, touched it, looked for more and found none of it. She wasn't immune to the knowledge of how they tormented me, playfully or not.

She dipped my head back into her basin of water, washing my hair.

She always worried on my behalf, and I'm sure that when I got older I would feel suffocated, but I was so much more selfish then.

"You are carving your name in my heart," she would whisper, desperately, and I would ignore her as time went on. As a child it was not the case because I heard every word.

She would dress me in clothes that she made herself, strange but in Herculaneum with its port and associated peoples not notable, untangle my hair. She had a surprising tenderness toward me. She had always had it.

In Herculaneum, Leechtin was something of a social character, very connected but also unknown. She was not a name known by the average person, only by those who were key, and looking back on it I'm sure she was part of slave trading in some way, buying and selling for precious sums to those looking for specific traits like beauty, strength, something to do with character. I'll never know it for sure, but there were too many whispery parties, too many strange moments. There was plenty of money. From what I could see, she had no enemies and no rivals, never for long anyway.

The villa was sumptuous, the finest accommodations on the inside. The weird thing was the lack of mosaics, lack of statues, lack of faces or bodies in the artworks. They weren't representative; she didn't care for that kind of thing, and it was her house only. She spited the gifts of her associates. I can't lie and say that there weren't specific instances which I remember enraged her on that front, gifts of boys in particular she did not relish but were given often. She had a very specific taste that way, I must remark without pretense.

It would be very foolish to try to pretend that Leechtin does not feel something special for children which is not sweet, but there are sides similar to it. I should know more than anyone. I wouldn't trust anyone to tell me how it was. I know quite strongly that predilection in her the best. She had the ability to be both very beautiful and very ugly, but I have tried very hard not to condemn her for either beauty or ugliness.

That is how I have felt. It is how I feel.

***

What was Herculaneum? It was something that ended very quickly. I was nine before anything changed. There was enough of being tossed around and enough of being coddled in between my seven and my nine. The parties stopped, and Leechtin's mood turned darker. Sometimes she would pull my hair or throw me out of bed, pull me screaming from the servant's quarter or dump me in the fountain.

She only tried to drown me once. I forgave her. I loved her.

***

It happened quickly. She was holding me near the fountain as always, maybe a little tighter than usual, murmuring words that I couldn't hear. She had stiffened and I had tried to look up and swiftly I was underwater, struggling to untangle myself from her arms and screaming from the cold that knocked the breath out of me. She did not push down my head but merely held me under, arms made of immovable marble forcing me to the granite bottom, and it was over as fast, more arms pulling me away and lifting me out. Screaming, yelling, slamming door.

Safe with Nataniellus, I struggled to get out of his arms because I wanted to get back to her, back to Leechtin. I had to.

"She'll kill you," the new lover said, always being kissed, always being fondled, the new captive.

I scratched and bit his arms so that he would drop me and he protested when I pushed him aside and ran out.

And she was not murderous, sitting where she had been left, holding her arms open for me while the darkness made patterns through the window.

I didn't cry. She did.

***

It wasn't the only time she tried to kill me, but it was the only one that required intervention. After Nataniellus came into the villa, she was even moodier than she had been when Vasvius defied her and the parties stopped. She was always whispering in my hair where I couldn't see her, and the words didn't make sense. Sometimes she would cry, usually she wouldn't. I was always her favorite child, and she gave me even greater reign then and I could do whatever I wanted.

No longer did I wait in the servant's quarter for her whim; I could go find her and while never happy to see me, she was always happy to have me.

I was never jealous of Nataniellus. I don't think that he really thinks that Leechtin and I were lovers then. I think that it is only something he accuses Leechtin of when he rides off into his furies. It was a great period of reflection for him, in his new master's house. Leechtin wanted his affection very much then, without wanting to give very much at all. I didn't know anything about the new lover's origins. He was shy about me, and I didn't have eyes for anything but my purpose.

I don't wonder that it's how most of the children I have tortured felt about me, though I have never had the natural passion for it that others have. It was better then, you see, because I have become a very ugly thing.

It was easy in Herculaneum. Wander in the daytime, go home at night, lie in the cool courtyard or under the fountain, on the marble. On the nights increasingly often when Leechtin wouldn't find me I might fall asleep in one of those places. I remember it fondly, waking up in early hours out of doors.

Sometimes Leechtin would come scoop me up while I dozed, waking me with little protest. There was always a cool place where she was concerned, warm coverlet or not.

I'd give anything to have one more night like that.

***

Would it be completely obvious to say that I've been victimized by others a lot and often? Would it be awful to say that I have let myself be taken advantage of and allowed myself the luxury of the resultant melancholy far too often? I have been indulgent, a drunken playboy. I have also been a victim of my circumstances, created or not; why has it been so difficult to find somebody, or some part of myself that can find a healthier way to cry about it? Why do I do these things to myself over and over again?

Sometimes I think Leechtin knows about it, how I inflict pain onto myself, but I don't think it ever occurs to her to wonder why. She has hinted at it, but far be it for her to dally on my personal situation in the face of her own great want for comfort. Is it more selfish for me to ignore her desperation for my embrace so that I can sit in front of mirrors and wonder about myself? I have been absorbed by it for some time, as it is easy to be absorbed by things when everybody imagines that you are dead and no one comes to talk to you.

In Herculaneum, there was never anything but thin protection for the uninitiated.

Let us not think about that time in my life anymore. I wasn't in control of it. It is not my story.

Let us imagine, for now and forever, that everything I have done has been done with good intentions. The bad tempered self must be left out. I do not feel that I can bear it. It would be cruel to say that I have inherited it, and for my life it would not ever be true. I don't know that things had to turn out this way at all.

I am not able to be charitable to myself.


	4. Chapter 3

_Sorry that i've been so late with the updates lately. School's being a total ----- and now that i'm sick, it's turning ME into a -----. In other news, i've been feeling a sudden urge to work on one of my latest ideas for a plot...which would've been good news if it hadn't been for the fact that the plot's not even fully developed enough for me to start writing its chapters_

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Translations:

*S'il vous plait ne me frappez pas encore. – Please do not strike me again.

**Je meurs. – I die.

***Faux. Je vous prends avec moi. Je vous veux. – I take you with me. I want you.

**** Ange doux. – Soft angel.

**2nd Act - Paris, hard ground. **

I ran my fingers up his stomach and he gasped, beautiful with gray eyes. His lips begged me to kiss them so I kissed them, enthralled with his rapture at my simple ministrations.

Long neck, aristocratic neck, the most elegant kind, I sucked on him beneath his ear, at the jaw, digging my fingernails into his skin below the navel so he screamed and it turned then, from rapture into terror.

Forgive me that you really did think that I could save you.

He didn't push me away but I pushed him against the wall, pinning him, blushing at the oh wonderful, wonderful moment before the little snake bite that ends the life and quiets the struggle. I dug my nails deeper into his flesh; Dasius burst into tears.

When his knees gave way I gave way with him, letting him sink down to the floor, dying dying dying, a beautiful fifteen year old boy.

I slapped him. He whimpered, starting to see things. I straddled him with my full weight, two hands on the earth to the right and left of his head, looking into his eyes unseeing.

He didn't try to say anything to me.

I slapped him again, looking for the flush of blood in his face. There was none. I slapped him harder only because I wanted to slap him.

Occasionally, one stumbles upon fortune. I found Dasius at Bons Matins, house for lost children in Montmartre.

"S'il vous plait ne me frappez pas encore."*

I withheld my hand.

He was splendid, nearly infinitely.

"Where is my brother?"

"I have fallen on him already."

He was quiet at that, knowing full well what it meant to be the object of such intentions.

"Je meurs."**

"Faux," I insisted, "Je vous prends avec moi. Je vous veux."***

"I don't want to go."

"Be quiet," I said, slipping my hands beneath his back to prop him up, "We are going together."

He ran his fingers through my hair. We were lovers until we left the city.

***

"Can't you see that this is dangerous? She'll get us all killed."

"Don't tell us what to do, Dasius. It's nothing."

I petted Nicolas's blood matted hair. He chattered by my neck, full of a blood fury at the thought of Faya.

"I don't understand you. You're supposed to take care of us but you can't see that there is already suspicion?"

"I suspect that you are supposed to do as you are told," I bore my teeth at him, turning away, "Of course I can see it."

"You have to control her better. You have to-"

I wheeled around and backhanded him across the face, not hard enough to knock him over, hard enough to hurt.

"You have no right," I told him, "You have no right."

He made to storm out but stayed where he was, eyes downcast, fists closed.

Nicolas pulled on my hair gently.

***

The two of them were my little treasures, more so Nicky, not as argumentative, not as forceful, and not, ultimately, as loving. I had never done anything like it before, keeping anyone. They were younger; I felt responsible for them in a way I had never felt for what I suppose constitutes my brood.

In the past, lovers had come and gone, and I would bring them over in a passion or out of boredom, kill them just as fast out of the same impulses. It was not a game, but it resembled a game. Dasius and Nicolas were not a game to me. I didn't want something then. It was not motivated by a specific desire, having them. I wanted Dasius; but it became something else. I did not seek out a candidate for altering my life because it was not a pattern that I could give up in any real way. I had made no resolution to change it.

They were my little angels, my little protectors, at least for awhile, and I loved them, also for a while. Concerning Dasius, perhaps it was a cruel love. Perhaps it can be nothing else. Concerning Nicolas, I was simply amused by him.

Little brother, petit ange doux****, with his softly curling brown hair and big, begging eyes. He had a cruel caricature of a smile, five years old. I didn't think about it. I just did it, bringing him over. I just did it. I don't want to say that I felt anything. I don't want him to think that there was any ultimate reason at all. Anything I felt was insignificant. It was not a passionate move on my part towards a five year old to bring him over. It was just done. I just did it.

Nicolas got snarky as he got older, well spoken but not charming. As a child, he was only vicious and needy. I gave and gave and gave of myself willingly. I've got to say it didn't come down around our heads as quickly as I thought it would. Nicolas was not subtle but people see what they want to see. He was obvious like a peacock at a funeral. I didn't need Dasius to tell me that. One does not have a child walking into their apartment having bathed in the blood of their fellow man without realizing that time is short. I didn't know how to tell myself to leave.

Nicolas could just be so sweet. He needed a parent, and I wanted to give him that, as grotesque as it is. Don't misunderstand me; I didn't think about it. I never said 'I want to care for a child'. That would be ludicrous. What I had was a five year old hound of hell who wanted to cuddle in bed with me and I did it.

"You are too severe," he would say, licking his dry lips, in following years.

I do not think that it is a severe description. I do not think that he remembers what it was like, how I could not hold him for more than a few minutes, how he would go after children and their parents without any sort of advance notice, how he would even bite at me and his brother with those sharp little teeth and that steel trap of a jaw. We could not keep him in proper clothing because we could not keep them clean from day to day. He doesn't remember, because it was a short period in his long life and though still relatively horrible he is calculated now, much more refined in his decision making. The truth then was that there was hardly a mind behind it at all and I did not allow myself to be terrified. I am not like Dasius. I do not entertain notions that we should have drowned him. I did not imagine that he would improve but I did not imagine that I wanted to do without him. At least he was exciting.

Also, honestly, no matter what he has to say to the contrary, killing Nicolas would have broken Dasius's heart.

***

I shook him desperately. Nicolas's eyes were rolled up at the ceiling. I took him to bed. I curled around him and pushed my face into his blood logged hair while he dreamed bloody bloody dreams.

Dasius watched us sleep. Dasius stood by the wrought iron tangle of a footboard, a great iron fence of an end of a bed.

He was learning not to talk to me when I was taken with Nicky. It was all he could do to watch me be very lost. I can't apologize for it. I have no words.

He was sad all the time. He felt that he had lost his little brother, lost him, lost him in a way that is different than him being taken away by me. He understood then that I had not planned it. It did not shake his faith in me, looking at me for answers because he was so young and I was so very very old. Dasius had been there when Nicolas was born, or perhaps died. I would not allow myself into his heartache. I wanted no thought of it to enter into my space because I was obsessed with maintaining a self contained kind of torment. I could not have comforted him in that frame of mind. Long suffering, misguided lover was my melodramatic role then. I convinced myself that I needed it. I told myself that he was merely angsty and it drove me apart from him. As perfect for me as he was, I couldn't take the reasonable voice in my head.

So he learned not to talk at all if there were other people in the room, and instead would approach me when my defenses were rigidly up, so as not to touch a vulnerable part.

There were always times with Dasius when I would break apart and crawl into his bed. There have always been. He holds me with both hands open, lets me have him, loves me when I cannot love myself. It is not a secret that there are many things wrong between us. For me, it does not help matters that Leechtin herself seemed to desire Dasius for a love affair when she showed up years later. It does not foster warmth in me to have competition.


End file.
